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OLDMANDARE'S 
TALKS h COLLEGE MEN 



Howard Bement 




Book_^J>^ 

CppyrightlM? 



COEHUGHT DEF0SJI5 



Old Man Dare's Talks to 
College Men 



Old Man Dare's Talks 

4 

to College Men 



By 
HOWARD BEMENT 



With an Introduction by 

Marion LeRoy Burton 

President of the University of Michigan 




New York Chicago 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1922, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



y 



\p^ 



New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 



•DEC 30 

ClA602ei9 



To 

William A. Comstock, 
"Old Man Dare's" 
Foster-Father 



INTEODUCTION 

EVEEY fraternity man in America 
ought to read this little book. 
He ought to read it as a fresh- 
man because it tells in plain words just 
the choices he must make. He ought to 
read it as an upperclassman because it 
will give perspective to a joyous life, the 
serious duties of which he may neglect. 
He ought to read it as an alumnus be- 
cause, with " Old Man Dare," he has 
messages in his soul which his chapter 
needs. 

Discriminating parents will not misun- 
derstand this book nor borrow unneces- 
sary trouble from certain dark spots in 
the background. The fraternities in 
American colleges and universities have 
become aware of their mistakes and have 

7 



8 INTRODUCTION 

corrected the evils which grew up around 
them. Their tendency is distinctly up- 
ward. In recent years they have been real 
assets to our institutions of higher learn- 
ing. 

The author of this book has sensed with 
remarkable clearness and searching in- 
sight the whole situation. College men 
must give heed to his message. Surely no 
one can imagine that he does not know 
what he is talking about. He is perfectly 
familiar with the background. He writes 
freely in the technical jargon of the under- 
graduate. Above all, he has not lost his 
sympathetic understanding of college stu- 
dents and their world. 

No one need imagine that college men 
to-day are not serious. On the surface, it 
appears that the things of the mind are 
their least concern. Just scratch that pro- 
tective exterior, however, and you will dis- 
cover a real man struggling honestly with 
the issues of life. Our greatest danger is 
that too many people will assume that the 
student's pose is the student himself. He 



INTRODUCTION 9 

likes to get away with it. He likes still 
better to have you pull it off. This book 
does it. If you want an intimate glimpse 
into American fraternity life read these 
pages. If you are a fraternity man you 
must prepare yourself, if you are honest 
(and I know you are), to assume actively 
some new obligations. 

Marion LeEoy Burton. 

University of Michigan, 
Ann Arbor. 



Contents 

I. " What are You Here For? " . 13 

II. "Why Study?" 29 

III. "How to Study" .... 42 

IV. "The Fraternity — A Millstone 

or a Milestone?" .... 57 

V. " Causes and Effects " . . .75 



11 



I 

" WHAT ARE YOU HEEE FOR? " 

1TELL you the old man was right. 
The trouble with you, Freshman, 
is that when it comes to waving the 
long ears no one can compete with you. 
You're just a natural born ass. Now you 
cut out of this conversation for a bit, and 
give it a chance to recover itself.' ' 

" Well, for my part, I think the old man 
is plain nutty, and — " 

" Who asked your opinion? " the first 
speaker broke in with heat. " Here are 
two of us upperclassmen soberly discuss- 
ing a serious subject before the fire, and 
you young asses kick out of bounds and 
begin braying like * * * " 

So much greeted my ears as I took off 
my overcoat in the familiar reception hall. 
I had not been back at the old house for 
more than five years. Not in all the 
twenty-three years since my graduation 

13 



14 OLD MAN DARE'S 

had so long a time elapsed between visits. 
Now I liad softly opened the front door, 
and had let myself in ; noting with a thrill 
of remembrance the spacious hall, the dig- 
nified wainscoted dining-room, the library 
and stair-hall on the left, and beyond, 
through two intervening doorways, the old 
circular smoking-room that was the heart 
of the place. I could now see a segment of 
that room, blue with tobacco smoke, in the 
midst of which human figures moved dim 
as ghosts in Tartarus. How familiar it 
all looked and sounded! I felt an under- 
graduate again, and, with a sense of pos- 
session, strode through the library into 
the circle before the fire. The strange 
faces sitting there, half-hidden in the in- 
cense, soon disillusioned me, however. 
Who were these young interlopers that 
had taken, with such assured effrontery, 
my old place by the fire? My first im- 
pression was one of pique; but this soon 
changed as all sprang to their feet and 
greeted me, after the first hasty self-intro- 
duction, with a warmth that said more 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 15 

plainly than words: " You are welcome; 
you are one of the elect; that is all we need 
to know." 

I was soon seated, pipe in hand, on the 
circular window-seat that marked the cir- 
cumference of the room; and, after a bit 
of conventional, made-to-order conversa- 
tion, I gradually fell out of the desultory 
talk hoping that the discussion I had inter- 
rupted would be resumed ; for I wanted to 
know what it was that could so stir the 
phlegmatic undergraduate mind. The 
blight of my coming was, however, like the 
first frost to the squash vines. The subject 
had wilted before my alien presence, and 
apparently could not be revived. So I 
turned to the upperclassman who had 
seated himself at my side — a blue-eyed, 
dark-haired, clear-cheeked fellow, with a 
rich, mellow voice, which I at once recog- 
nized as the one that had so warmly in- 
veighed against the freshman. He had 
been introduced to me as Thomasson, and 
seemed to respond to the name of Eob. I 
liked him at first sight ; and it took no very 



16 OLD MAN DARE'S 

keen observation to see that he was, among 
those in the room, the one to whom all 
looked for initiative and leadership. 

" Tell me," I said, " what all the row 
was about as I came in." 

Bob laughed his 1 contagions laugh, and 
said that it was all about " Old Man 
Dare." 

" Do you mean Eollo Dare, '97? " I 
asked; " for, if you do, I'll have you re- 
member that he was a class below me, and 
I'm not so old as to be decrepit." 

But you couldn't abash that boy; he just 
laughed again, more heartily than before, 
and I liked him better than if he had at- 
tempted some labored apology. 

" Well, he's ' Old Man Dare > to us, in 
any event; and I assure you the adjective 
is one implying respect and affection 
rather than disrespect. You see he has 
been over here from Chicago for a fort- 
night (he went back only last night), deliv- 
ering some lectures before the Junior 
Laws. I believe he is a non-resident lec- 
turer on Admiralty Law. He stayed here 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 17 

at the house, and after dinner we used to 
listen to the old man gas. He held forth 
every evening to crowded benches; and I 
believe none of us would have gone to bed 
if he had not sent us off. The last half- 
dozen evenings he was here, he gave us 
what he called some ' four-minute talks ' 
before we broke up and went to our rooms 
to study. He would get up and drape him- 
self over the mantel — you know how tall 
and thin he is — and, with pipe in his left 
hand and the index finger of his right 
leveled at us as though we were a stubborn 
jury, he would begin. And he handed us 
some straight stuff, too, and most of it so 
clear and convincing that even the most 
stupid freshman couldn't evade its logic. 
But some of his points roused heated argu- 
ments last night, and to-night they broke 
out again; and I guess we were at it when 
you came in." 

" What kind of stuff did he hand you? " 
I asked with interest, for I knew Dare as 
well as most; knew him as a young 
pledgling the year before he became a 



18 OLD MAN DARE'S 

brother, always under foot and in tlie way ; 
knew him as an underclassman, bright, at- 
tractive, lazy ; knew him as an upperclassr 
man, slowly growing up; knew him as a 
law student, just beginning to see the in- 
side of things; and knew him as a prac- 
titioner, each year adding to his capital 
stock, financial, mental, and spiritual. 

" As I said," continued Bob, " it was 
straight stuff; but it wasn't preaching, and 
it wasn't dogmatic, and it wasn't over our 
heads. It was simple, direct, sympathetic, 
and — irritating; I guess that's the word. 
It was irritating just as a flannel under- 
shirt is; made you feel squirmy and 
scratchy, and yet you knew it was good for 
you." 

"In other words," I said, "it got 
under your skins. And what was it all 
about? " 

11 Let me see," said Bob, as he groped 
back a bit to find the answer. " Well, he 
started off with one harangue which he 
called, < What Are You Here For? '; and 
then came, ' Why Study? ' ; and then ' How 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 19 

to Study ' ; and ' Causes and Effects ' ; 
and there was one mighty pertinent one, 
1 The Fraternity — a Millstone or a Mile- 
stone? ' That was the one we were dis- 
cussing when you came in." 

"I'm interested," I said. " You see, 
1 Old Dare ' and I have been friends for 
years. He visited me last summer when 
he was east, and he draped himself over 
my mantelpiece and gave me some four- 
minute talks expanded. He told me many 
of the things he wanted to say to every 
young undergraduate; and now, I see, he 
has got some of it, at least, off his chest. 
I'm glad you liked it, and approved of it. 
Now tell me what he had to say on subject 
number one, as nearly as you can remem- 
ber it; for I think the thing ought to be 
reported for the benefit of all, and I'm 
willing to be the goat if no one else will 
be. His subsequent remarks I'll make 
him dictate to his stenographer for me; 
or you yourself can give me the substance 
of them after dinner, or at any convenient 
time. ' ' 



20 OLD MAN DARE'S 

I was much interested to see how well 
this young collegian would be able to give 
the substance of one of my friend's talks. 
It was a severe mental test to which I was 
subjecting him, although he did not know 
it. I have tried to reproduce what he 
said, sitting on the outskirts of the 
crowded smoking-room, with fitful gusts 
of conversation from all quarters blowing 
upon him. He was a good boy, that kid; 
he thought. And what I have transcribed 
below is the result of his thinking. 

" I find it difficult," he said, " to give 
you the impression of Brother Dare's first 
talk. You see he had gassed with us very 
freely during that initial week; and what 
he had said was very informal. When he 
began on that first formal little four- 
minuter, all he had previously handed out 
to us served as a kind of background. You 
really ought to have that to get at the meat 
of his more studied utterance. Among 
other things he had made very clear to us 
that he didn't especially blame underclass- 
men for being damn fools; he said quite 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 21 

frankly that lie liad been one himself. But 
lie did blame all college students, not for 
what they did that was off-color, but for 
the insufferable number of essential things 
they failed to do. ' I don't ask you not 
to do this or that/ he said; ' you will 
probably be asses enough to do it no mat- 
ter what I say. I don't ask you never to 
touch a drop; I don't ask you not to raise 
hell like a lot of hoodlums; I don't ask 
you, in short, not to do anything. If your 
own inbred ideas of what is decent and 
right won't direct you, nothing from me 
will induce you to be decent and gentle- 
manly and clean. But I am full of wrath 
at the thought of things you don't do: the 
things for the doing of which you really 
came away to college in the first place.' 

" He poured this sort of thing into us 
hot and heavy," continued Eob in remi- 
niscent strain. " Then on that night 
about a week ago he stood up there where 
Cootie Bryan is standing now, and said he 
wanted to give us, each evening until he 
went away, a four-minute talk which 



22 OLD MAN DARE'S 

should summarize some phase of what he 
had been giving informally. He had been 
delivering four-minute talks during the 
Loan Campaigns, and he was obsessed 
with the notion that four minutes was the 
divinely appointed interval within which 
all the sacred revelations had been im- 
parted to man. Moses must have been on 
Sinai about this length of time; and God's 
talk to Paul on the Damascus road was a 
1 four-minute speech.' I'll give you his 
first speech as nearly as I can remember 
it. He entitled it 

' What Are You Here For! ' 
" In the old Biblical theory of the 
human body, we find the bowels to be the 
seat of the affections; the heart, the seat 
of the intellect. The old record speaks of 
' bowels and mercies ' ; and the psalmist 
prayed for an i understanding heart. ' We, 
of a more modern age, have moved every- 
thing up one story in the human dwelling ; 
the affections from the bowels to the heart; 
the intellect from the heart to the head. 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 23 

This process seemed to leave the base- 
ment untenanted ; but not for long. A new 
tenant moved in, a noisy, domineering fel- 
low, whose influence extends to the top of 
the house. And so we are accustomed to 
speak in racy modern parlance of the man 
who has anything under his abdominal belt 
as one ' who has guts \ In this day and age 
a man who is to get ahead in the world is 
supposed to have his basement pretty well 
stored with the article named; but the 
trouble with most of you is, that you have 
been storing the basement, and playing 
high-jinks on the second floor, with never 
a thought as to the tenant who should be 
living and working up under the roof. 
This three-fold equipment for life — stam- 
ina, sympathy, and scholarship — is what 
college is supposed to bring out. You get 
the first on the football field, the second in 
your fraternity and general social experi- 
ence ; the third in the classroom. 

" When I ask you, ' What are you here 
for? ' I ask you a question that may bring 
a multitude of answers. But mighty few 



24 OLD MAN DARE'S 

of them will come from heads that have 
thought the thing out very deeply. Most 
of you are here because you were sent; 
because you followed the path of least re- 
sistance. Not one of you, I venture to say, 
came of your own volition in the hope of 
becoming three-story men. You never 
thought out the three-fold function of col- 
lege, and never aimed at well-rounded 
character. You wanted, perhaps, to make 
a team and sport a college letter ; and your 
entire time was spent, so to speak, in 
throwing out on your bodily residence an 
abdominal bay of pretentious size ; or else 
you aimed at becoming pigeon-breasted 
by giving free reign to social intercourse. 
The top floor with most of you is not built 
up at all; it's only a rough-hewn attic, 
stored with useless lumber and junk which 
you have lugged in from a lot of college 
courses into which you put neither the 
stamina of persistent effort, nor the heart 
of sympathetic understanding. You don't 
live there at all, and the place is cold, 
bleak, and uninviting. 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 25 

" Cardinal Newman said that a univer- 
sity was a collection of books. If that be 
true, most of you have never been to col- 
lege at all. You have been working in a 
muscle factory day-times, and have been 
attending a kind of social finishing school 
at night. But how many of you know in- 
timately the inside of the college library? 
Could you investigate a subject requiring 
original research? Could you go to the 
stacks and track a subject down? Do you 
study, long hours at a time, in reading- or 
seminar-room? Do you know anything 
about ' a collection of books ' that does 
not begin with a best-seller and end 
with a worst? Have you ever made the 
slightest effort to meet your professors 
half-way? Have you ever accorded them 
anything but a kind of condescending tol- 
erance? Have you ever been beyond the 
threshold of their top story and noted the 
rich furnishings of their intellectual resi- 
dence? You are too poverty-stricken 
yourselves even to possess the desires to 
be richer intellectually than you are. 



26 OLD MAN DARE'S 

" What are you here for? To grow into 
a three-story symmetry. But the trouble 
is that you emphasize the building and the 
furnishing of the lower floors, and neglect 
the topmost. That is why I am hammer- 
ing at the necessity for study. Stamina 
you must have — and you will probably 
get it (of a physical kind, at least — I am 
not so sure of moral stamina) without any 
urging from me. Sympathy (I use the 
word broadly) you will need all through 
life; but I think I can trust you to get it 
without my pleading for it. But scholar- 
ship you will not get because your stamina 
has too little moral fibre in it, and your 
sympathy is too narrow to include hob- 
nobbing with your intellectual superiors. 

" And so I insist that you are here 
chiefly to study. And right here I want 
you to note the two most important by- 
products of study. The first is culture; 
the second is power. You are here to 
store culture and to create power. Believe 
me, you will need both in the world of men. 
Culture will do two things: it will bring 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 27 

you broad satisfactions from within, and 
will accord you pleasurable recognition 
from without. Power will do two things : 
it will create in you a self-poise, the sense 
of which is akin to greatness; and it will 
carry you among men with a sense of ac- 
complishment. Culture and power — the 
product of scholarship — supplemented by 
stamina and sympathy: get this sym- 
metrical growth out of your college ex- 
perience, and you will have answered 
' What are you here for? ' as the modern 
collegian must answer it if he is to become 
a citizen of the new world of men and 
things now springing into being. Don't, I 
beg of you, leave this place with 

* Nothing to look backward to with pride, 
And nothing to look forward to with hope.' 

Dante never pictured a hell deeper or 
more fiery than these words imply. Are 
you going to think of your college in after 
years as ' Alma Mater ' or as a Deceitful 
Mistress? It's up to you to make the 
answer yourselves." 
Here the familiar, resonant old gong 



28 OLD MAN DARE'S 

rang for dinner. Eob laughed aloud. " I 
feel almost like a preacher," he said. I 
gave his hand a cordial pressure, and fol- 
lowed him out into the dining-room. 

" I want to hear the rest after dinner/ ' 
I said. 



n 

" WHY STUDY? " 

I DON'T know why it has always been 
considered bad form to shake 
hands with the butler. Possibly it 
is because we have inherited our ideas of 
butlers from English forebears, who liked 
theirs made of wood, and loved to regard 
them as silent, well-oiled automatons; 
bloodless and nerveless, figures in livery 
for the performance in faultless routine 
of conventional duties. We in my day dis- 
liked thinking of our general factotum — 
our butler-valet-waiter — as merely an ani- 
mated corpse. We made Davy, who was 
a true " image of God carved in ebony," 
a member of our little family. I don't 
know that he was ever initiated into the 
secrets of our order, but he was certainly 
admitted into the very Star Chamber of 
our daily intimacies. We u joshed " him 

29 



30 OLD MAN DARE'S 

like an equal, and he " joshed " back, his 
thick lips parting over his ivories in an 
expansive but well-bred smile. He bor- 
rowed our money and wore our clothes. 
Many a negro ball was graced with the 
purple and fine linen of our chiefest Beau 
Brummel, Clark Hyatt; not always, to be 
sure, with the Beau's knowledge and con- 
sent. His knowledge usually followed the 
fait accompli; his reluctant consent came 
after Davy's smooth and ingratiating 
apologies and explanations. 

So it was, when I entered the dining- 
room and beheld the well-remembered 
black face surmounting the faultless white 
jacket, that I did not hesitate to grasp a 
swarthy extended palm, and did it with a 
real sense of feeling at home. I rather 
wanted to invite Davy to sit down with me 
at the table and talk over old times, for he 
knew my contemporaries as none of these 
youths did who were flocking in to dinner 
with me; but I yielded to convention and 
gave over the desire to call Davy from his 
proper sphere, one which he graced with 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 31 

as much, ease and sang froid as the diners 
theirs. He was the only living link con- 
necting me with the past of my college 
days, and I made certain that I should 
have a visit with him before the evening 
was over. He could tell me, I knew, all the 
latest gossip of Charlie Stratton, Harry 
Bridgmen, Dude Stone, Billy Comstock, 
the "Whitmans, Marquis Eaton, and all the 
other unregenerates of my time who have 
forgotten the gentle art of letter- writing ; 
whose epistles generally are typed, and 
bear in the lower left-hand corner, " Dic- 
tated but not read by Mr. "; soul- 
less records of slaves* of business depend- 
ent on their secretaries or stenographers. 
The dinner went off bravely albeit I de- 
tected familiar culinary lapses which 
made me think the beery cook I knew 
twenty years before still infested the 
kitchen. The brave palates, however, and 
the copper-riveted digestive organs of 
these college boys seemed not to notice 
anything amiss; but then, they had not 
known married life and home-cooking. 



32 OLD MAN DARE'S 

The thought of what I used to do, gas- 
tronomically, indicated clearly to me the 
amount of water that had passed under 
my bridge since the time when I had been 
accustomed to thrust my legs thrice daily 
beneath that long, black, oaken table. 

Eob Thomasson was on my right; on 
my left, a burly blond youth with a ready 
wit and a brisk tongue. The boys called 
him " Spider.' ' What Eob could not tell 
me of Old Man Dare's second four- 
minute speech, Spider supplied; and 
from the quantity of material poured out 
by the two during the dinner-hour I in- 
ferred that my old friend, Eollo Dare, 
must have lost his four-minute terminal 
facilities. From the material which the 
two supplied I worked into somewhat co- 
herent form Old Man Dare's second talk, 
entitled 

" Why Study?" 

" You boys won't study as you ought 
until you see the reasonableness of study. 
Most of you have been drawn here to col- 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 33 

lege by the vaguest of purposes, some of 
which I outlined to you in my talk last 
night. What I want to do to-night is to 
make perfectly concrete the reasons why 
study should be your chief aim in college ; 
and I can do this only by showing with 
absolute clarity the relation of habits of 
study and concentration formed now to 
your future success in life. In attempting 
this I shall do little more than paraphrase 
a memorable article by President Foster, 
of Eeed College, entitled ' Should Students 
Study? ', which appeared some years ago 
in Harper 9 s Magazine. The article is now 
available in book form, and I earnestly 
commend to you the purchase and the care- 
ful reading of it. I also want you to buy 
and read a book, equally memorable, by 
Charles Mills Gayley. His book is Idols 
of Education. 

" Now I think you will agree that you 
are here in college to promote your 
chances of success in life. The fatal error 
with most of you is that you regard the 
social light of the fraternity or the athletic 



34 OLD MAN DARE'S 

hero as the one most certain to succeed in 
his chosen business or profession. By 
common consent yon regard the c grind ' 
as foredoomed to failure — a fellow with- 
out imagination, a dull plodder, wliose 
eyes are blind to the joyous insouciance 
which seems to you the best preparation 
for life. 

" Let us begin at the very beginning, 
and see if you are right. In so far as sta- 
tistics are available for our purpose, let 
us follow boys from high school to college, 
from college to professional schools, from 
professional schools into life, and see if 
there be any definite relation between 
scholarship and success. 

" A University of Wisconsin professor 
compared the records of hundreds of stu- 
dents at the University of Wisconsin with 
their records in various high schools. He 
found that above 80 per cent of those who 
were in the first quarter of their high 
school classes remained in the upper half 
of their classes throughout their four 
years in the University ; and that above 80 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 35 

per cent of those who were in the lowest 
quarter in their high school classes failed 
to rise above a line of mediocre scholar- 
ship in the University. A similar investi- 
gation conducted by the University of 
Chicago produced surprisingly similar re- 
sults; whence it seems fair to infer that 
promise in the high school becomes per- 
formance in college. Of course the boy 
who was a failure in high school may be- 
come a success in college. Statistics show 
that he does once in five hundred cases — 
a miserable sporting chance to take, you 
will admit. 

" Let us now follow the college man 
into the professional school. Many a col- 
lege loafer ' kids himself along ' by saying 
that the abstruse subjects of the liberal 
arts course may well be slighted, for they 
bear no relation to the real work of life. 
It will be sufficient, he thinks, to drag 
along over these obstructions in the way, 
and begin seriously to work when he has 
reached the practical studies of law, medi- 
cine, or engineering. But notice the sta- 



•> 



6 OLD MAX DARE'S 



tisties. Here are some that refer to all 
graduates of Harvard College who, during 
a period of twelve years, entered the Har- 
vard Medical Seliool. Of 239 who received 
no distinction as undergraduates, 36 per 
cent were graduated with honors from the 
Medical School. Of the 41 who received 
honors as college undergraduates, 92 per 
cent took their medical degrees with 
honor. In the Law School, figures for 
twenty successive years are available. Of 
those who were graduated from college 
with no special honor, only 6% per cent 
attained distinction in the Law School. 
Of those who were graduated with honor 
from the college, 22 per cent attained dis- 
tinction in the Law School; of those who 
were graduated with great honor, 40 per 
cent; of those who were graduated with 
the highest honor, 60 per cent. Of 340 
men who entered college with conditions 
and were graduated with plain pass de- 
grees, not 3 per cent won honor degrees in 
the Law School. 

" What shall we infer from these rec- 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 87 

ords? Simply this: that it is so hard for 
a .student to change his habits of life after 
the crucial formative years of college, that 
not one man in twenty years who v. 
satisfied with a ' C ' grade or lower, gained 
distinction in the studies of the Harvard 
Law School. The same deadly parallel 
follows the Yale graduates who went up to 
Cambridge for their courses in law. 
Their performance at Yale proved a per- 
fect index of their performance in the Har- 
vard Law School. It is evident, therefore, 
that the ' good fellow ? in college who 
4 does not let his studies interfere with his 
education,' but who intends to settle down 
to hard work and real accomplishment in 
the professional school, is almost a myth: 
he simply does not exist in numbers suffi- 
cient to be reckoned with. 

" But is success in the professional 
school a necessary index of success in life? 
In answering this question — the vital one 
for all of you — President Foster has con- 
ducted some invaluable investigations 
which bears pertinently on the point at 



38 OLD MAN DARE'S 

issue. From two widely separate univer- 
sities, Harvard and the University of 
Oregon, lie had competent judges send him 
a list of men who had made a notable suc- 
cess of life — men from certain classes ex- 
tending from 1871 to 1901. He then had 
the college records of these men compiled, 
and compared them with the records of 
men selected at random from the same 
classes. In general it was discovered that 
above 50 per cent of the successful men 
had been good students in college; of the 
men not regarded as successful or selected 
at random, only 12 per cent had done work 
of distinction in college. Evidence tend- 
ing to the same conclusion has been com- 
piled by other widely separated universi- 
ties — Yale and the University of Kansas. 
The president of Western Eeserve, after 
wide study of the subject,, states that he 
finds no exception, in the records of any 
American college, to the general rule that 
those who achieve most before graduation 
are likely to achieve most after gradua- 
tion. The list of the first ten scholars of 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 39 

each of the classes that were graduated 
from Harvard College from 1850 to 1860 
is a list of men eminent in every walk of 
life. It is no unfair inference that the first 
quarter in scholarship in any college class 
will give to the world as many distin- 
guished men as the other three-quarters. 

" I could go on multiplying figures. 
From the records of 1,667 graduates of 
Wesleyan University it is found that of 
the highest honor graduates one out of 
two becomes a distinguished man; of Phi 
Beta Kappa men, one out of three ; of the 
rest, one out of ten. Of Yale valedictory 
ans, 56 per cent are included in Who's 
Who. Of the men from twenty-two se- 
lected colleges, it was discovered that 
three times as many honor graduates were 
in Who's Who as all the rest of the living 
graduates of those colleges put together. 
The records of Oxford and Cambridge 
Universities show surprisingly similar re- 
sults ; for a certain period dealt with in a 
special investigation of the matter, it was 
discovered that 46 per cent of the honor 



40 OLD MAN DARE'S 

men at Oxford who were admitted to the 
bar attained distinction in the practice of 
law, while of the mere pass men, only 16 
per cent attained distinction. 

" Why study? Simply because you 
can't afford not to. The almost inevitable 
result of college loafing is spelled large in 
the records. The curse of the age is the 
curse of Mediocrity; and those contribute 
most largely to the army of the mediocre 
who could have achieved, but did not; 
those who had your opportunities, and 
neglected them. Why study? Because it 
has been proved with almost mathematical 
certainty that the hours on end you can 
grind without ceasing are the coefficient 
numbers showing how many times your 
normal chances of success in life are mul- 
tiplied by power of concentration and piti- 
less application. Can you r afford not to 
study, and study hard? ' Think on these 
things ' ; and then come to the only sensi- 
ble conclusion. That conclusion must be, 
if you have sanity and sense, something 
like the following: ' What I do with to- 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 41 

day's lesson in Psychology or Mathe- 
matics will, in large measure, determine 
what I shall do with to-morrow 's problems 
in those subjects; what I do with to- 
morrow's lessons determines the result of 
next week; next week will determine next 
month's success or failure; next month, 
next year ; next year, the next decade ; the 
next decade, my sum-total of life. Whither 
am I tending? Toward success or failure? 
Toward habits of study or habits of loaf- 
ing? My present is the product of my 
past ; my future is the child of my present. 
What that future shall be is mine to deter- 
mine, — and that problem in College Al- 
gebra is yet to be solved. Thanks, fellows, 
but I guess I'll go upstairs and study." 



Ill 

" HOW TO STUDY " 

AFTER dinner I went out to pay a 
call on an old friend of my col- 
lege days, now Dean of the De- 
partment of Literature, Science, and the 
Arts. He could tell me, I knew, something 
of what I wanted to find out about the 
reputation of my fraternity for scholar- 
ship. At the conclusion of the visit, remi- 
niscent of old times and old friends, I 
thought I knew a little more of the signifi- 
cance of Pope's words, " Damn with faint 
praise/ 7 Still, anything was better than" 
the kind of praise which had been faculty 
habit in my day. The Dean said frankly 
that scholarship in the chapter was better 
than during the time of my college career 
(which was not especially flattering to me, 
I told him) ; but he left a quite clear im- 
pression with me that there was still some- 
thing to be desired. 
I wandered back to the chapter house 

42 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 43 

about eleven. The living rooms were a 
blaze of light, but empty. The house was 
still. I had noticed that a few windows 
in the second floor were still aglow, and I 
wondered if Old Man Dare's four-minute 
talks had taken hold, and if those lighted 
panes betokened the proverbial " midnight 
oil " of the pale student wrestling with 
syntax, social statistics, and psychology. 
In a fair glow of optimistic enthusiasm I 
wandered into the smoking-room, and drew 
an easy chair up before the fire. Out of 
the glowing coals I fell to conjuring up 
the past, with all its tragi-comedy of 
youth, its fun and its frolic, its hopes and 
its fears, its successes and its failures. 
What a procession of old familiar faces 
went flitting by! And how time had 
played high-jinks with many a dear- 
remembered chap ! Some of our most lib- 
eral spenders were now filching a pre- 
carious livelihood from the pockets of a 
cold and unsympathetic world. Some 
whose youth seemed to promise little were 
now captains of industry, " riding in 



44 OLD MAN DARE'S 

chaises/' and dropping an occasional 
largesse, with the broad gesture of con- 
scious liberality, to their less fortunate 
brothers. Some were prominent in law 
and politics ; some were treading the hum- 
drum by-paths of life* But all went by in 
beloved and well-remembered attitudes as 
I sat thus in a brown study before the fire. 
Suddenly I sat up, shook off my remi- 
niscent mood, and drew a little writing 
table toward the fire. I had soon written 
the following letter: 

" Deak Old Man: 

" You have cut a wide swath here at 
the Chapter House. I find evidences of 
your recent visit scattered about as thick 
as beet-seed in a kitchen-garden. You 
have dropped platitudes like hail. The 
chapter-stomach (I vary the figure) is 
fairly distended in an effort to assimilate 
your spiritual and intellectual fodder. I 
fear that moral indigestion will soon set 
in. For heaven's sake, then, give me 
these four-minute classics of yours, for 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 45 

they ought to be preserved in authorized 
version in the archives of our devoted 
order. In particular send me your simple 
little lilt on How to Study, for if you have 
any gaudy sign-posts to set up along the 
highroad to learning, I want to see them. 
I have never yet known any man who 
could with certitude direct blind youth 
toward the fount of pure wisdom. If you 
have the nerve to think you can do (or 
have done) it, please put me next by first 
mail. I am, as you know, a simple, un- 
adorned schoolmaster, and I don't know 
lioiu to study myself. I should immensely 
like to know how, and I should like to be 
able to share the secret with the lame, 
halt, and blind pupils before whom I pose 
as an omniscient pointer-of-the-way. Sit 
down before your patient, sad-eyed stenog- 
rapher, and point out the way to me. Do 
it now." 

" Whah, ain't yo'-all gone to bed yit! " 
It was Davy's oleaginous voice, sounding 
somewhat between the purring of a cat 



46 OLD MAN DARE'S 

and the dripping of thick molasses. It 
startled me, however, out of my train of 
thought, for his step was as light as his 
voice was soft. 

" You old black rascal," I said; " you 
nearly frightened me into goose flesh. 
Why don't you put your feet down so that 
they will give some advance notice of your 
coming? " 

Davy was going the rounds, extinguish- 
ing the lights for the night. He now stood 
expectantly in the doorway. 

" What's Mr. Dare's city address? " I 
asked. 

" 110 Souf Deebo'n Street, sah," was 
the ready answer of our travelling direc- 
tory, given with a grin of solid ivory and 
solid satisfaction. " He's jes' been heah, 
sah. It's a pity yo' missed him." 

" Yes," I said. " I understand he has 
been talking a bit during his stay." 

Davy's face became fairly luminous 
with joyous reminiscence. " Talk! " he 
cried; " say, cain't Mistah Dare talk, 
dough! He's jes' de lubbliest talker Ah 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 47 

ebber beard. He jes' open bis mouf, and 
de words come a-slidin' out as smoove as 
dey was greased. He don' nebber bab to 
wait for no word to come. He jes' tbinks 
a thing, and dere's de words a-waitin' to 
jump rigbt out and tell yo' all 'bout it. 
Ab come in Tuesday nigbt wid a telef oam 
message f oh him, and beard him argyfyin ' 
de young men somethin' gran'." 

" What was he talking about? " I asked, 
wondering if this black cistern could yield 
anything but muddy water. 

" He was lecturefyin' 'em on how to 
study," was Davy's immediate answer. 

" What did he have to say? " I asked, 
feigning an indifference that only half con- 
cealed my interest. I had heard it said, 
" Out of the mouths of babes "; but I had 
never foreseen such an application of 
Biblical wisdom as this coincidence seemed 
to promise. If this African babe could 
satisfy my curiosity, I should make sure 
of what I wanted without waiting to hear 
from Old Man Dare. I was not sure 
that there would not be distinct advantage 



48 OLD MAN DARE'S 

in getting his pedagogic platitudes diluted 
with Ethiopian innocence. I confess I 
somewhat feared receiving the weighty 
letter for which I had made so summary a 
demand, for I looked forward to Rollo's 
writing me the usual drool about study 
somewhat in the following fashion: 
" Study is not merely the definite act of 
memorization; it is not merely reading 
and absorbing; it is not merely thinking. 
It is the bringing of a welter of ideas into 
orderly cohesion; it is the systemization 
of apparently incoherent, but related facts ; 
it is the building up of divergent but com- 
ponent elements into a body, and the in- 
fusing of that body with the breath of life. 
It is making lifelike what would otherwise 
be dead ; it is making glow with ruddy fire 
what would otherwise be a dull spark; it 
is the vitalization of drudgery by a vision, 
at the beginning of the effort, of that 
drudgery in its relation to human activ- 
ity." I had fancied his going on with a 
dry dissertation on " interest, habit, at- 
tention, concentration, observation, asso- 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 49 

ciation of ideas; the cultivation of mem- 
ory, reasoning power, and the reflective 
processes. " If Davy was an honest me- 
dium, Old Man Dare said nothing of the 
stock, pedagogic platitudes in the stock, 
pedagogic terminology. I motioned my 
luminous black compeer to a near-by chair, 
stretched myself out comfortably in my 
own, and plucked the following wisps of 
wisdom from the burrs of Davy's reten- 
tive memory (as nearly as I can remem- 
ber them) : 

" How to Study." 

" Now, yo' young fellahs doan know 
nothin' 'bout study. Yo' tinks yo' does, 
but yo' ain't. When Ah used to live in 
dis yeah house it was jes' lak a barnyard 
at study-time. De donkey was a-brayin', 
de sheep was a-runnin' roun', de cow was 
a-mooin', de hog was a-gruntin', de chick- 
ens was a-cluckin', an' de ole fox was 
a-barkin' ober de fence. Ah specs it's jes' 
de same now. Befoah yo'-all kin study, 
gotta keep de animules quiet; an' to keep 



50 OLD MAN DARE'S 

'em quiet yo' gotta quit bein' 'em. When 
yo' studies, yo' quit bein' all de animules 
in de barnyard. Some of yo' am one ani- 
mule, an' some of yo' am all of 'em put 
togedder. 

11 Now, fust ob all, doan none o' yo' be 
de donkey. What does he do when he's 
thinkin' a heap — when he's a-studyin'? 
He jes puts his foah laigs in foah difrunt 
drections, an' he lays back his years, an' 
he meks all his muscles hard, an' dey ain't 
nobody kin move him. No sah, he won't 
budge a inch. Lots o' boys when dey 
studies is jes lak dat. Dey's all tight- 
muscled, an' muley, an' obstinet. De good 
learnin' wants to lead 'em somewheres, 
but dey's too tied up wid stubbornness to 
move. Dey ain't relaxin' none. Dere 
whole min' am plumb again de thing de 
study-book's a-tryin' to do; Now doan yo' 
be like no jackass. To' jes' git yo' foah 
laigs in shape, restful an' easy, an' yo' 
whisk up yo' years so's dey kin heah, an' 
yo' git ready, quiet an' easy, to tak de 
load; an' den it won't be so darn hebby. 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 51 

Yo- 9 jest try to git in min 9 an 9 body de 
attitude ob study. 

" Nex', doan yo' be like no sheep, fer it 
am sliure one damfule beast. It ain't got 
no mite o' sense ob drection. De ole ram 
go off on a tangent, an' dem fool sheep s 
follows along, along, not a-thinkin' where, 
an' bnmps dey fool haids. Dat's yo' all 
ober, yo' fool Mabels o' fake students. 
An ole ram-thought breaks loose in yo' 
haids, an' yo' go a-follerin' it like a sheep, 
nebber thinkin' where yo' started fer nor 
where yo' wanted to go when yo' picked 
up yo' study-book. Yer ole mis'ble habits, 
dey jes' act plumb locoed, and dey f oilers 
roun' and roun' de barnyard, an' dey doan 
git yo' nowheres, an' all yo' do is to bump 
yo' fool beans. Doan yo J be no damfule 
sheep when yo' tries to study. 

" An' fer hebben's sake doan yo' be no 
ole cow when yo' settles down to work. 
She ain't got no pep. She jest lays dere 
in a cool corner, an' blinks her purty, lum- 
nous eyes, an' chaws her ole cud, an' flicks 
her ole tail kinda lazy-like. Ah seen many 



52 OLD MAN DARE'S 

a young lawyer study a brief, Ah has, lak 
he were a cow; an' say, man, it jes' 
natch 'lly made me mad to watch him. His 
eyes had a fur-away look in 'em like he 
was a-eaten' lush grass an' drinkin' cool 
watah miles away in de meddows. An' he 
kep' a-turnin' obah his ole cud, an' chewin' 
kinda mild-like. He kep' a-goin', shuah; 
but his motions was* so restful dey'd a put 
a angel to sleep in de midst ob a hallelu- 
yah chorus. Slow, an' solem, an' far- 
away, an' dreamy — dat's de ole cow when 
she studies. In hebben's name, doan yo 9 
be no ole cow when yo 9 studies. 

" Now, some of yo' studies jest lak a 
hog. Yo' noses roun' somethin' fierce. 
Yo' gits yer ole black snout right down in 
de dirt ob de subject, an' yo' roots roun'. 
But yo' doan nebber tak yo' eyes off en de 
groun', an' yo' doan see nuthin' bey on' 
jest de one carrot ye's a-rootin' fer. An' 
My soul! What a pow'ful lot o' gruntin' 
all de while. Shuah! Yo' wants to root 
roun' fer de lesson ob de day; but cain't 
yo' lift up yo' ole muddy eyes an' see no 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 53 

connection ob de lesson wid things up 
highah? De carrot am only one part ob 
de whole garden, and only one teeny mite 
ob de whole meal. An' yo' so plumb dirty, 
intlectually speakin'. Yo' wants to wash 
yo' minds an' lift up yo' haids. Doan be 
no ole dirty gruntin' rooting hog when yo' 
studies. 

" An', land's sake! Ef dere ain't de ole 
hen ! Ah jes' hates dat damfule bird. Ah 
run ober one wid my car a-comin' here, 
kase I could no mo' help it 'en Ah could 
fly. Dat ole hen, she race dis-a-away, an' 
den dat-away; an' den she turn an' run to 
de right, an' den she turn an' run to de lef ', 
an' den she turn an' run plumb under de 
wheel. De f edders f ollered me lak smoke ; 
but de ole hen she lay in de middle ob de 
road as daid as las' week Friday. De only 
time she's ebber quiet is when she's set- 
tin'; but she doan know if it's china aigs 
er ones she made herself dat she's settin' 
on. She ain't got no jedgment, but she 
runs off lak her mind was set on a hair- 
trigger; shootin' in ebery direction and 



54 OLD MAN DAKE'S 

h'ittin' nothin' but de fendah or de radia- 
tah ob life's buzzwaggin. Some ob yo' 
studies lak dat. Yo' rushes at a subjec' 
an' den yo' rushes away from it, workin' 
lak de debbil, an' jes' gettm' nowlieres but 
under de wheel. Mah boys, don't yo y 
study lak no ole fule hen. 

" Listen! D'ye heah dat? Dat's de ole 
fox barkin' ober de fence. Ain't he de 
boy? He ain't shet up in no ole barnyard, 
an' he kin come and go when he pleases. 
He's plain clebber, dat slim lil' fox. When 
he wants a meal, he jest creeps in, all 
sneaky an' quiet, lak a bit o' breeze bio win' 
through a crack, an' he taks off a chicken 
es easy es first declenshun. He 's de walk- 
in' delegate ob de nebber-work union, an' 
he's right on to his job. His life am jes' 
one long play-time. He jest lubs excite- 
ment, an' he gits in dangrous places fer 
de fun o' foolin' somebody an' gittin' out. 
His motto ain't ' Treat 'em rough '; it's 
6 Fool 'em right, an' fool 'em always.' He 
does it, too. An' — hark! What's dat? 
Blame me, if it ain't de yell of ole Mr. 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 55 

Fox. I specs lie's ketched in de trap dat 
was set yestiddy — dey mostly is. An' 
some ob yo' — all dat's so clebber — always 
foxin' de perfessers, always workin' lak 
Mistah Bushtail to fool 'em right an' fool 
'em always — well, look out fer de trap, fer 
it's gwine to spring on yo' slmali. Doan 
yo' study lak no sly ole fox dat only fools 
hisself. 

" Now, ef yo' will p'sist in studyin' lak 
some one ob de barnyard aninmles, why 
doan yo' study lak de boss? Jes' look at 
'im standin' dere. He kin be trusted to 
stan' widdout hitchin'; be '11 come when 
he's called; he'll stan' quiet while yo' 
hitchin' him; he'll pull hard when yo' give 
him de ordah; he'll go fast when yo' flick 
him wid de whip; he'll stop when yo' yells 
' Whoa '; he'll back up when yo' done gone 
too fur; he'll stand an' tek his meals civil 
an' proper; an' when he's turned loose, 
dey ain't none of dem barnyard folks can 
frisk any finer 'n him. He keeps hisself 
clean, and he ain't so keen on feedin' he 
doan nebber look up. His years is always 



56 OLD MAN DARE'S 

a-pointin' to'ds de truf, an' he's got a 
open eye fo' wisdom. Push er pull, stand 
er trabble, fas' er slow, always on de job, 
gib me de ole hoss. My belubbed chilluns, 
when yo' studies, Ah recmend yeh studies 
lak de hoss." 

I threw my letter to Old Man Dare into 
the fireplace, and wrote him a letter of 
apology which I think he never fully un- 
derstood. Davy I rewarded with an old 
safety razor and a copy of Talks to Stu- 
dents on the Art of Study. 



IV 

"THE FEATEENITY— A MILLSTONE 
OE A MILESTONE !" 

1CAME down to breakfast late on 
the morning that followed Davy's 
midnight dissertation on the art of 
study. The dining-room was nearly de- 
serted, but a confusion of dishes, and 
chairs in disarray, proclaimed many a 
hastily swallowed meal. Three late-com- 
ers were leisurely eating. 

" Isn't it the very dickens," proclaimed 
an indignant freshman from the bottom of 
the table, " the way this darned academic 
faculty insult us with eight-o 'clocks ? 
You'd think their chief business in life 
was to make things as unpleasant for us 
as possible. Here I am — my eight-o'clock 
in French all prepared, and a dead sure 
100 per cent in sight. And what happens ? 
I don't get my 100 and am charged with 
a cut, merely because I forgot to wind my 
alarm-clock. I call that rotten luck; and 
all because the faculty make a point of 

57 



58 OLD MAN DARE'S 

getting us out of bed in the small hours of 
the morning. " 

16 You make me tired, freshman, with 
your kindergarten complaints," said a 
two-hundred-pound sophomore from near 
the bottom of the table. " If you call the 
faculty names for setting eight-o 'clocks, 
what can be said for them when they make 
a special point of assigning us football 
men to afternoon divisions that recite at 
four? I call that plain brutal. It seems 
to me they are doing everything they can 
to queer athletics in this institution. 
They're a bum lot anyway, with a point of 
view as circumscribed as an oyster's. 
Here we are, trying our darndest to make 
the university great in athletics ; and they 
show as much sympathy toward our efforts 
as a freshman medic exhibits toward the 
cadaver he's carving. I call the whole 
system rotten, and the faculty rotters." 

I took a seat beside Eob Thomasson, the 
only senior present, and tried to drag my 
mind into sympathetic accord with the at- 
titude of the persecuted underclassmen. 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 59 

" Is the university really going to tlie 
devil? "I asked of Bob. 

Kob's face lighted with his contagious 
smile. " Absolutely," he said. " The 
faculty are wholly unreasonable in their 
attitude toward the undergraduate point 
of view. They insist on too much atten- 
tion being given to academic performance, 
and are too little sympathetic toward the 
more important activities of college life. 
Of course they are a bunch of nuts, or they 
would see that they can't get away with 
it. They stand about as much chance as 
an egg in a cyclone. They're just making 
themselves unpopular, and are tolerated 
here only as a necessary evil. We have as 
few dealings with them as possible." 

Eob's eyes twinkled as he reached for a 
muffin. 

" It is terrible," I said, u for a state 
university to lend official sanction to study 
from books, and attendance upon pre- 
scribed recitations. I wonder the taxpay- 
ers stand for it. My own idea is that this 
institution ought to turn itself into a glori- 



60 OLD MAN DARE'S 

fied night-school, leaving the entire day- 
free for the more important functions of 
college life. Still, I suppose there are stu- 
dents here who want their evenings open 
for certain kinds of social relaxation that 
cannot be found during the day; so per- 
haps my scheme would not work after all. 
A few are bound to be dissatisfied, no mat- 
ter what you do for them. ' ' 

Davy brought me some cold cereal and 
tepid coffee with the regal air of disposing 
of a largesse. I took what was offered in 
a spirit of meek and grateful acceptance, 
and propounded a question to Eob. 

" You were having a hot argument the 
night I arrived over one of Old Man 
Dare 's talks. I infer that he did not strike 
an altogether popular note in the talk 
under discussion. What was the rub? I 
thought what he had to say met with a 
rather popular acceptance. J 9 

" It did/' said Eob; " but some of those 
foundling orphans among the underclass- 
men have got to crab at something, and 
one of the points the Old Man made in his 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 61 

fourth talk got under their skin. He was 
giving it to us older fellows as to our posi- 
tion of responsibility toward the younger; 
and the infants, some of them at least, re- 
sented the notion that anybody had to be 
responsible for them. They were quite 
able to take care of themselves, they said ; 
and they wanted it distinctly understood 
that they came away from home with their 
eye-teeth cut, and came away primarily 
for purposes of freedom from restraint. 
If we older fellows were to dog their every 
movement, keep them in nights, superin- 
tend their study, and give them their bot- 
tles, they might just as well have stayed 
at home under nurse or governess. So it 
went until some of them got very crabby 
indeed. " 

" They're an uneasy lot," I remarked; 
1 c they remind me of some one I once knew 
very well indeed." 

" They're uneasy all right," answered 
Eob. " You see they took exception also 
to another thing Mr. Dare said. He 
stressed the idea that they were, as a gen- 



62 OLD MAN DARE'S 

era! thing, an impressionable bunch, look- 
ing with round-eyed wonder and admira- 
tion to the upperclassmen, worshiping 
the very ground we walked on. I must say 
that I myself took some exception to that. 
I hadn't noticed any freshmen around this 
joint making a tin god of me. If they do 
worship me, they have a confirmed habit 
of conducting their rites in secret. But 
you never can tell what they really are 
thinking about, for they have a habit of 
concealing their thoughts behind a camou- 
flage of words. They can talk more and 
say less than any politician who ever 
mounted a soap-box.' f 

" The human race will never grow up," 
I remarked, substituting a platitude for 
the better reply I ought to have made. 
" History goes on repeating itself, and 
freshmen are still freshmen. But with re- 
gard to the Old Man's standpoint: do you 
suppose for a moment that he has forgot- 
ten his college days, or has he simply 
changed his mind about things with the 
passing of the years? " 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 63 

"I don't know," answered Eob. "I 
know lie hadn't lost his sympathy with 
youth. The fellows had only to hear him 
and see him to understand that. And by 
the way," he said, diving into his coat 
pocket and producing a formidable-looking 
envelope, " here are all the Old Man's 
talks, received in this morning's mail. I 
asked him to transcribe them for me, but 
I never thought he would take the trouble. 
He must have dictated them almost at 
once upon reaching Chicago. I told him I 
wanted them to read at chapter meetings, 
where they could be discussed at length, 
and with due order and decorum. Don't 
you want to read these over? " — and Eob 
passed the envelope to me. 

And so it is that I am able to produce 
in Dare's own words his fourth four- 
minute talk, entitled 

" The JB'eateenity — A MhjjStoete or a 

Milestone? " 

" ' God gives us our relatives; thank 

God we can choose our friends,' said a 

gentle cynic not long ago. Most fraternity 



64 OLD MAN DARE'S 

affiliations, however, are rushed into not 
with, eyes open to the choosing of wholly 
congenial friends, but rather with eyes 
upon the securing of the kind of specious 
social position which this or that frater- 
nity may seem to offer. By the same token 
the fraternity often blindly chooses the 
scion of some socially prominent family 
without regard to the qualities of con- 
geniality possessed by the candidate him- 
self. If he wears his clothes well, pos- 
sesses the requisite air of sang froid, 
seems to be sufficiently sophisticated, and 
does not eat with his knife, we gather him 
in with a sense of complacent self-satis- 
faction. He may later prove to have the 
irascible temper of a Sam Johnson; the 
intellectual capacity of a Peter Simple ; or 
the morals of a Don Juan ; and he may fit 
into the family relationship of the frater- 
nity as easily as a cat can be made to feel 
at home in a kennel of Boston bulls. It's 
pretty much a matter of luck, under the 
present system, how it's all going to turn 
out. The element of luck can be neutral- 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 65 

ized, as I see it, only by such moral 
strength, in the fraternity as will enable 
the chapters to assimilate even the weak- 
est of freshman material, and bring it out 
at the end of the course worked up into 
the best finished product possible. 

u Let me tell you the story of one fresh- 
man who came to the university in my 
time. It is typical of a number of cases I 
could cite. Ned French came from a small 
town in central Nebraska. He was as 
clean, as fine-looking, as upstanding a 
young freshman as I saw on the campus 
that autumn. Good breeding and gentle- 
manly conduct marked him immediately 
as a desirable acquisition for any frater- 
nity; and a winning personality com- 
mended him to our entire chapter before 
he had been in the house ten minutes. It 
was a short rushing season for him. We 
' saw him first, ' and made certain that no 
other crowd got a look at him. He liked 
us, and we certainly liked him; and it was 
only a few days before he was wearing the 
pledge button. 



66 OLD MAN DARE'S 

" He was initiated in early November. 
Not until after initiation did the boy's 
inherent weakness really assert itself, 
though I thought I saw signs of it in his 
daily intercourse with us as a pledged 
man. Coming, as he did, from a small 
middle-western town, he exhibited a real 
fear lest he might lose easte with his 
newly acquired brethren through his lack 
of sophistication. His cue, it seemed, was 
to be thought competent always to do the 
proper thing, to appear the man of the 
world. By the same token, a few of the 
upperclassmen who were men of the world, 
seemed to fear lest their favorite fresh- 
man should have too few opportunities to 
learn the arts of sophistication. They 
would not have him a mollycoddle or a 
milksop or a ' Christer r — as the irrelevant 
but expressive term then was. He must 
sow his wild oats; every red-blooded and 
virile man did. They made it their busi- 
ness, therefore, to break him in early. 
The night after initiation they took him 
to ' Joe's 9 * f and brought him back about 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 67 

four the next morning thoroughly soused 
— loaded to the gunwale — his first ' beer- 
party. ' Some of us were pretty hot about 
it, but our anger cooled under the rush of 
laughter that greeted Bill Fairly 's witty 
account of the freshman's behavior. 

" The next week they took him to De- 
troit, and gave him his first glimpse of a 
red-light district. I never heard the de- 
tails of the orgy that followed, but I soon 
learned the dread result of it. Ned seemed 
ill, and I learned of secret visits to one of 
the young physicians of the town. His 
work lagged ; he cut classes with persistent 
regularity, spending hour after hour, with 
unopened book upon his knee, staring into 
the open fire from the depths of an easy- 
chair; and soon he had a Dean's warning. 
The fresh, wholesome color of his face and 
the clear look of his fine blue eyes faded, 
and were succeeded by a haggard face and 
a furtive eye. The square, manly shoul- 
ders drooped, and the boy's whole attitude 
became devil-may-care. He went home 
before Christmas, disease-ridden, disap- 



68 OLD MAN DARE'S 

pointed, despondent. Of all the bright 
hopes for a happy and successful career 
which he had brought with him to col- 
lege, not a vestige remained. Physically 
wrecked, mentally morbid, spiritually be- 
smirched, he went back to his parents (he 
had been less than three months away 
from them), bearing, not in what he said 
perhaps, but more eloquently far in what 
he was, testimony to the wickedness of 
sending boys away to college. I have 
often wondered what tragic scene was en- 
acted as he faced his mother and father; I 
have often wondered what became of him. 
I never heard of him again, and I fancy he 
never wanted to think of us; but I have 
never forgotten his splendid promise nor 
his dizzy fall, like Lucifer's — from heaven 
to hell in a few short weeks. Had the fra- 
ternity been his guide to the best instead 
of to the worst, the fraternity would have 
profited immensely itself; for Ned had 
potential qualities of greatness. And the 
boy would have got that for which he left 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 69 

home to go a- seeking — growth in man- 
hood, power, and usefulness. 

" Of how many fraternity chapters 
throughout our land may similar stories 
be told? And the sadness of it all is that 
the full force of the tragedy is not realized 
until callow youth becomes ripe age, see- 
ing life slip away year by year, noting the 
preciousness of time, the fitfulness of op- 
portunity. If Ned French had been tossed 
into the sea with a millstone about his 
neck he could not have stood a worse 
chance for life than he did, cast as he was 
into a small group of amiable and delight- 
ful drifters, who clung about his neck and 
bore him down. The fraternity was his 
millstone, and it carried him under before 
he even realized he was in deep water. 
When I read Lycidas I think of Ned, 
' under the whelming tide, ' and visiting 
* the bottom of the monstrous world'; he 
always seems to me literally under the 
wave, literally drowned — as much so as 
poor Brownie, who went to his death in 
Whitmore Lake in '99. 



70 OLD MAN DARE'S 

" I remember another freshman who 
came into the chapter during my senior 
year. He wasn't much to look at, wore his 
clothes badly, and possessed few of the 
amenities of polite society. How he got 
in, I don't know. I think he must have 
slipped in when no one was looking; or 
perhaps some of the brothers were color- 
blind on the night of election and couldn't 
tell a black ball from a white one. But be- 
hind a rugged exterior Frank Farquhar 
concealed a heart of gold and a character 
of rock. The friends he picked out, the 
upperclassmen he most emulated, were 
those who set him right, and guided toward 
the light his first faltering steps in aca- 
demic life. I never saw a boy grow as he 
did. He took polish like a block of Car- 
rara marble. There never had to be any 
apology for his appearance after the first 
semester; and as for the * social ameni- 
ties ' — he fairly ate 'em up. By Sopho- 
more year (so I was told — I was then in 
the law school, and couldn't do much first- 
hand observing), he was an incipient Ches- 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 71 

terfield; and at graduation lie wore dress- 
clothes with the ease of a Ward McAlister 
leading a cotillion. He was, however, no 
mere fashion-plate. His heart of gold had 
not rusted, and the rock of his character 
had not crumbled. He imparted of gold 
and rock alike to the upbuilding of the 
chapter and the whole fraternity; and 
gave of both in equal measure later in the 
service of the university. The fraternity 
in his case was not a millstone to drag him 
down; it was rather a milestone to mark 
his steady, onward progress. The frater- 
nity made him outwardly what he already 
was inwardly — a gentleman ; and from her 
he drew fast friendships, and of her he 
carried away warm and tender memories. 
" I tell you, fellows, these two cases 
(not remote and infrequent, but near and 
oft-repeated) are at once the shame and 
the glory of our fraternity — of all fraterni- 
ties of which I have knowledge. The shame 
must now and forever be wiped out — de- 
leted — done away with; and in this the 
fraternity cannot shirk its responsibility. 



72 OLD MAN DARE'S 

If it is to take untutored freshmen and 
make of them worthy graduates, it must 
stand toward them in the relationship of 
a parent. Whether the fraternity likes 
the job or not, it is in partnership with the 
college, and it must accept the responsi- 
bility of a partner. The college aims to 
turn out gentlemen and scholars ; and that 
chapter is false to its co-partnership re- 
sponsibility which does not supplement 
the college effort with all the powerful and 
pervasive influence inherent in the frater- 
nity system as it now exists. 

" Was there ever an influence greater? 
The most plastic material in all God's 
world comes fresh to the fraternity's hand 
to be molded as the fraternity will. The 
average freshman neophyte is the most 
impressionable creature of the animal 
kingdom. He is truly simian, ape-like in 
his terrible eagerness to conform, to be 
like the norm, to follow his elders, c to 
belong ' in every sense of the word. No 
Philistine ever prostrated himself before 
Dagon more abjectly than the average 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 73 

freshman, in spirit, bows down to the ad- 
mired upperclassman. Do you upper- 
classmen to whom I am speaking feel no 
overwhelming sense of the responsibility 
that is yours? Are your lives so ordered 
that they may safely be taken as models 
by the freshmen of this group? Are your 
leisure hours sometimes devoted to setting 
the verdant one on the right path? Are 
your thoughts set upon disciplining the 
weak and directing the blind? Do you 
dare ask, with Cain's scornful emphasis, 
' Am I my brother's keeper? ' If you do 
dare to put that question I must answer 
you: ' Whoso shall cause one of these 
* * to stumble, it is profitable for 
him that a great millstone should be 
hanged about his neck, and that he should 
be sunk in the depth of the sea.' And I 
say to you again, if one of these freshmen 
needs your help, he must not come to you 
in vain, for ' whosoever shall compel thee 
to go one mile, go with him twain. ' 

" Boys, is your chapter as it stands 
to-day a means of destruction or of life 



74 OLD MAN DARE'S 

to the freshmen you so unthinkingly ini- 
tiate? Are they better or worse for their 
affiliation with you? Will they rue the day 
they went with you, or look back on that 
day as a memorable and happy turning- 
point in their lives? Your chapter — is it 
a millstone or a milestone? " 



V 

" CAUSES AND EFFECTS " 

AS I sat in the lounging room that 
evening, waiting for the taxi 
that was to take me to the east- 
bound train, three sturdy freshmen in 
" tucks " were gathered about the piano 
doing a bit of close harmony preparatory 
to a concert to be given an hour later by 
the Freshman Glee Club. They presented 
a pleasing picture in their dress clothes, 
which set off broad shoulders and well- 
proportioned figures to advantage; and 
their vocal efforts were not wholly dis- 
pleasing. I was proud of the lads, and 
glad that they had found their way to the 
true fountain-head of light — my chapter 
of the best fraternity in America. 
" Three hearts of oak," I said, nodding 

toward the boys. 

75 



76 OLD MAN DARE'S 

a Three black crows, I say," rejoined 
an embittered sophomore. 

a Three black sheep," broke in a junior. 

" Three black-balls," murmured a tired 
and troubled senior, heavy with responsi- 
bility. 

" Three black idols, each worshiping it- 
self," spoke up a fourth. 

" Three black coons, with an African 
average of intelligence," urged a fifth. 

And the innocent victims of these jibes 
sang on untroubled and undisturbed, and 
I smiled as my own freshman days came 
back to me. The smile faded, however, as 
I remembered some of the harsh readjust- 
ments that had to be made during that 
troublous year; but it returned, as, in 
swift retrospect, sophomore, junior and 
senior years flitted by. I was leaving the 
scene of it all to go back to my work, and 
I was going with regret. I had found 
much in common with these genial hosts 
of mine. They had treated me well ; seem- 
ingly glad to see me when I came, and ap- 
pearing sorry now that I was to go. A 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 77 

man of more than forty is not above (or 
beyond) feeling flattered when yonth ac- 
cepts him on terms of comparative 
equality. 

The freshmen ceased from warbling and 
the weary upperclassmen seemed at rest, 
when Eob proposed the Parting Ode. "We 
gathered round the piano and sang it with 
real feeling, as I had done so many times 
before in that very place, years ago. The 
doorbell rang, the taxi was announced, 
and I was whirled away to the accompani- 
ment of boisterous farewells on the part 
of the boys, and a lusty backfire on the 
part of the car. 

Once on the train I began to read the 
last of Old Man Dare's Four-Minute 
Talks, Eob having permitted me to take 
the manuscript along. I read and mused 
intermittently until the train reached 
Detroit. There, to my delight, Frank Far- 
quhar clambered aboard, bound for New 
York. During the rest of the evening, 
until late into the night, we talked of old 
times, and during our visit I read him Old 
Man Dare's last talk, entitled 



78 OLD MAN DARE'S 

" Causes and Effects " 
" I am going home to-morrow morning 
and am speaking to you to-night, there- 
fore, for the last time. You have been 
patient and attentive listeners, and I thank 
you. I am grateful, too, for these oppor- 
tunities to get off my chest much that has 
weighed me down for years like an in- 
cubus. If you have been patient and at- 
tentive heretofore, may you be doubly so 
to-night; for what I have to say is that 
which comes most truly from the depths 
of my heart, born, as it is, of the fleeting 
thoughts and impressions of years, which 
go by like a procession. For no man who 
has been twenty years out of college can 
help being reminiscent, nor indulging in 
the habit of philosophizing over the in- 
evitableness of cause and effect. At forty 
a man's philosophy is not that conned 
from books ; it is all of his own making, 
conned from the pages of life. He reads 
at twenty from a Book that ' whatsoever 
a man sows, that shall he also reap ' ; but 
he discounts his reading (despite the au- 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 79 

thority of the Book), and believes that he 
is the great exception to all rules. At 
forty he reads from the scroll of life the 
same grim truth, and he now rejects the 
law of chance on which he formerly built 
his exceptions. Where he once hoped, he 
now knows; his theoretical has become 
practical; and he discounts the sporting 
chance. If he be a man of thoughtful 
habit he ' sees life steadily, and sees it 
whole ' ; and if he be also a man of forti- 
tude he remains still unabashed and un- 
afraid, despite the fierce inexorableness 
of all that he sees about him, and despite 
his knowledge that the law of cause and 
effect is as unchangeable as that of the 
Medes and Persians. 

" Do you remember the Bible story of 
Behoboam's career? Let me remind you 
of it. This young prince was to succeed 
his father, Solomon, as king over the 
twelve tribes of Israel according as he 
made wise or unwise answers to the ques- 
tions of the people. He had about him the 
old and tried counselors of his father, who 



80 OLD MAN DARE'S 

advised moderate words and popular con- 
cessions; but he rejected their counsel for 
that of the youth who had grown up with 
him, and who advised a harsh answer to 
the people. l And he spake to them after 
the counsel of the young men, saying, 
" My father made your yoke heavy, and I 
will add to your yoke; my father also 
chastised you with whips, but I will chas- 
tise you with scorpions." 9 And Eeho- 
boam lost five-sixths of his kingdom, and 
his life was a failure. 

" To the man of mature years the one 
astounding thing in life is the failure of 
youth (he forgets his own, perchance) to 
profit by the advice of its elders. When I 
see youth setting out on Life's journey, I 
think of Charles Lamb's jolly paradox: 
' Nothing puzzles me more than time and 
space; but nothing puzzles me less, for I 
never think about them.' Youth is puz- 
zled by life, but it never thinks of life. 
Youth has before it a million vivid object- 
lessons; were it endowed with any power 
of observation and reasoning it might 



TALKS TO GOLLEGE MEN 81 

begin life where the older generation left 
off — and be spared much grief. The his- 
tory of the human race would then be a 
stirring tale of progress from generation 
to generation, instead of the grotesque 
chronicle it now is of a little progress 
from aeon to aeon. There is not a youth 
in the land who does not think his father 
an old fogy, just as Eehoboam thought his 
father's counselors old fogies and out of 
date. * Times have changed/ Eehoboam 
doubtless said : 6 you old fossils are out of 
touch with the march of events. Go 'way 
back and sit down.' And the youth all 
cried ' Yea, Bo ! ' — and look what hap- 
pened. This young prince forgot, as many 
another forgets to-day, that the moral law 
is the same now as in the days of the 
decalogue; and that human nature re- 
mains the same from age to age; and that 
cause still, as always, is the father of 
effect. 

" Let me be more concrete in my state- 
ments. I have in my desk at home a pic- 
ture of eight men from the class of 18 — , 



82 OLD MAN DARE'S 

the initiates of that class into the sopho- 
more fraternity of Theta Nu Epsilon. 
They were upperclassmen when I was a 
freshman; and with a freshman's ingenu- 
ous emotion I coveted the picture because 
all the men in the group seemed then my 
ideals of what an upperclassman should 
be. They possessed, I thought, all the 
qualities of good-fellowship and camerad- 
erie to which I never could aspire. I often 
take that picture out of my desk to look 
at it; and as I scan the laughing, hand- 
some faces, I invariably fall into a brown 
study. History is here writ large. I see 
them as they were — care-free, jovial, 
happy-go-lucky; most of them easy drink- 
ers, jolly carousers, and liberal spenders; 
faultlessly dressed always, and always 
socially in demand. As I muse over the 
picture I remember what time has done to 
them. Two I have lost sight of entirely. 
Of the six whose stories I know, two died 
in youth and two others before they 
reached their prime; and of these four all 
but one died to pay the price exacted by 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 83 

outraged nature. They sowed their wild 
oats ; and they reaped their wild oats. Of 
the two who still are living, one is bank- 
rupt in health, the other in pocket and 
prospects. 

" If you want other concrete illustra- 
tions I can give them to you by the score: 
illustrations of the inevitableness with 
which effect follows cause. There was 
brilliant little Meadows, who threw money 
away as though he were working on the 
principle enunciated by old Ealph Bigod, 
that i money kept longer than three days 
stinks.' His time he wasted on the basis 
of the same generous apothegm. Expelled 
from college in his sophomore year, he 
soon had to be bailed out of jail by a gen- 
erous brother for jumping a hotel board 
bill. The last I heard of him he had run 
away with a chorus girl, who was support- 
ing him in precarious wise from her own 
earnings. 

" There was dear old Bill Eversley, 
who had more money to spend than any 
other man in the chapter. He spent it, 



84 OLD MAN DARE'S 

too. I saw him five years ago, gaunt of 
feature and glum of countenance. His 
6 bank ' had broken; and he, compelled to 
go to work, found himself unprepared for 
aught but manual labor. He was running 
a lathe in a Detroit factory, earning a bare 
living for his wife (a society favorite of 
our time, whom Bill had married in his 
days of affluence) and his two children. I 
respected his nerve, but I pitied his mis- 
fortune, for he had never been brought up 
to face the deadly round of economies 
which his* circumstances forced him to 
practice. 

" I could tell you, too, countless stories 
to illustrate the other side of the picture; 
stories of men of my time and of this 
chapter who also reaped what they sowed, 
but who sowed sobriety and industry, and 
reaped success. I can still hear the curses 
flung at the head of modest little Shanklin, 
who was denounced for an unsociable old 
oyster because he insisted on doing his 
work ; and whom many thought stingy be- 
cause he saved his money. He is well-to- 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 85 

do; is happily married; has a family of 
fine children; and now that he can afford 
it, is the most generous of men. It is easy, 
yon know, to be generous with money not 
your own, which you had not to earn, and 
of which you do not know the value. Old 
Shank is generous now with money he 
earned himself, and earned by hard work 
and worry. 

" The college man who wants his good 
time unadulterated by scholastic effort, by 
self-denial, or by serious thinking on the 
serious problems of life, may have his way 
if he will. But he must pay the piper. 
Cause and effect are Siamese twins, who 
cannot be parted; or, a better figure, they 
are the fateful Clotho and Atropos — and 
it is always the thread that Clotho spins 
which Atropos cuts at the end of life. It 
can be no other. Causation works cease- 
lessly, and the product is true to its genus. 
The egg of a goose produces a goose, not 
a swan ; and the egg of a swan produces a 
swan, not a duckling. 

" I yearn to see the day when college 



86 OLD MAN DARE'S 

men shall seek, as their portion in college, 
not softness, but hardness; not ease, but 
adversity; not Boman luxury, but Spartan 
simplicity. ' What a deal of cold busi- 
ness/ says Ben Jonson, ' doth a man mis- 
spend the better part of life in! In scat- 
tering compliments, tendering visits, gath- 
ering and venting news, following feasts 
and plays, making a little winter-love in 
a dark corner. \ That old Elizabethan 
might have been describing modern col- 
lege life ! It was he, too, who said, ' 111 
fortune never crushed that man whom 
good fortune deceived not,' and by good 
fortune Ben meant i ease,' and by ill for- 
tune he meant ' adversity/ in contending 
with which a man's spiritual muscle grows 
hard. I could quote Bacon, also, to the 
same effect. c The virtue of prosperity 
(ease) is temperance; the virtue of ad- 
versity (hard work) is fortitude, which in 
morals is the more heroical virtue. Pros- 
perity is the blessing of the Old Testa- 
ment; adversity is the blessing of the 
New, which carrieth the greater benedic- 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 87 

tion, and the clearer revelation of God's 
favor. * * * We see in needle works 
and embroideries [that] it is more pleas- 
ing to have a lively work upon a sad and 
solemn ground, than to have a dark and 
melancholy work upon a lightsome ground ; 
judge, therefore, of the pleasure of the 
heart by the pleasure of the eye. Cer- 
tainly virtue is like precious odors, most 
fragrant when they are incensed, or 
crushed; for prosperity doth best discover 
vice, but adversity doth best discover 
virtue.' 

" How wise those old fellows were! 
Have we lost in wisdom's stature since the 
' spacious times of Queen Elizabeth '? 
Shall we add nothing to their learning? 
1 1 know no disease of the soul but igno- 
rance, ' said Jonson again ; and I could add, 
i I know of no fatal disease of youth but 
blindness.' Lift up your eyes and see, 
modern collegian, writ large upon the 
scroll of time, how Nature works. Learn 
the laws of recurring seasons, of seed-time 
and harvest, of youth and age, of cause 



88 OLD MAN DARE'S 

and effect. And remember the words of 
Seneca, ' Vere magnum habere fragilita- 
tem horninis, securitatem Dei — It is 
true greatness to have in one the frailty 
of man, and the security of a God. ' 

" It is infinitely better to earn your 
pleasures in youth for maturity's spend- 
ing than to spend your pleasure in youth 
for age's bankruptcy; as much better as 
to have, in embroideries, the lively work 
on the dark background rather than the 
dark work on the light background. There 
is fiction, however, even in this concen- 
trated wisdom of the maker of epigrams. 
For the chief pleasure of youth comes 
(could youth but see) with satisfaction in 
things accomplished, with the approving 
nod of conscience, and with the free, un- 
trammeled play-spell that is honestly 
earned through work well done. Too much 
is daily condoned the college man on 
the plea of the ' thoughtlessness of youth.' 
' I have no patience,' cries Euskin indig- 
nantly, c with people who talk of the 
"thoughtlessness of youth" indulgently. 



TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 89 

I had infinitely rather hear of thoughtless- 
ness of age, and the indulgence due to 
that. When a man has done his work and 
nothing can any way be materially altered 
in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest 
with his fate, if he will; but what excuse 
can you find for wilfulness of thought, at 
the very time when every crisis of future 
fortune hangs on your decisions? A 
youth thoughtless! When all the happi- 
ness of his home forever depends on the 
chances, or the passions of an hour! A 
youth thoughtless! When the career of 
all his days depends on the opportunity of 
a moment! A youth thoughtless! When 
his every act is a torch to the laid train of 
future conduct, and every imagination a 
fountain of life or death! Be thoughtless 
in any after years, rather than now — 
though, indeed, there is only one place 
where a man may be nobly thoughtless — 
his death-bed. No thinking should ever 
be left to be done there. 9 

" Let us revise our entire thinking 
about the opportunities of youth and 



90 OLD MAN DARE'S 

the demands of college life. Cause is 
merciless; effect is inevitable. Moral 
blindness is unpardonable. Men are liv- 
ing now in a day the light of whose judg- 
ment is white and searching. * Whatso- 
ever ye have said in the darkness shall be 
heard in the light; and what ye have 
spoken in the ear in the inner chambers 
shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.' 
Verbum sapientibus satis." 



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